THE MOSLEM WORLD TO-DAY
FEasinsrr," " explosion," " movement," upheaval," " tidal- wave " : these are the words which are being used to-day to describe events in the Moslem world ; and used not simply in sensational journalism, but in serious, scholarly writing. Recent travel in Near Eastern and North African Moslem lands, and conference with minds from all parts of that world have convinced the writer that the actual facts are indeed more sensational than language can easily convey.
What sober words can characterize a Moslem world of which the following facts are of the type found in our daily papers ?
the catastrophic conflict of the Moslems of Morocco against France and Spain, and the turmoil in Damascus and the Lebanon ; the exiled heir of Haroun al Rasehid and fourteen centuries of Caliphs seeking an ignominious refuge in Europe ; the Sultan of Turkey secreted in the deserts of Arabia ; Turkey become a secular republic that has, so to speak, dis- established the Islamic Church, and is under the virtual dictator- ship of a group of agnostics educated in Europe ; Zaghlul Pasha governing (till lately) in Cairo as the first free Egyptian ruler of Egypt for three thousand years ; Bolshevist propaganda flowing across Nearer Asia and the Islamic world of North India. There is even something revolutionary to be found in the feminist revolt that gives us, for example, photographs of the wife of the Moslem governor of Egypt sitting unveiled in a group of men and of the wife of Mustapha Kemal unveiled on horseback in a group of soldiers.
It is overwhelmingly clear that the Islamic world is striking its tents and the caravan is moving. The problem is in what direction will it move. Or will it move in any one direction or wander confusedly on divergent tracks ?
The writer recently in conversation with two Arabs in Palestine, the sheikhs of Nain and Endor, listened to them ful- minating against Mustapha Kemal for having abolished the Caliphate in Turkey. Simultaneously they asked when Britain was going to carry out her promise of giving self- government to the Arabs. Here were the two contradictory principles of nationalism and of Pan-Islam seething simul- taneously in the minds of two pastoral village sheikhs on the edge of the Plain of Esdraelon.
Are we witnessing something parallel to the movement that changed European history when the unity of the Holy Roman Empire was shattered by the rise of nationalism ? Is the robe of Islam going to be torn similarly into nationalistic shreds, first by Egypt and Turkey and then by the others ? Or will the separate nations be formed and then refederate into a United States of Islam, or become a League of Moslem Nations ?
Was Lord Cromer right when lie said that Islam reformed was no longer Islam ? If he was, and if traditional Islam cannot survive Western science and civilization, can Islam survive in any form ? If Islam survives, can it remain a united force—social and political as well as religious—in the modern world ? Or will it melt into ordinary deism on the religious side and nationalism on the secular side ?
These and scores of other questions are presenting themselves to Western minds which are trying to think sympathetically and constructively about the Moslem world to-day.
Dr. John R. Mott has rendered a service of unusual value in approaching some two score of the greatest living experts upon the life of modern Islam and securing from them their opinions upon questions like these. If we name, for instance, among the writers Professor Margoliouth, Professor Snouck Hurgronje of Holland, Dr. Julius Richter of Germany, Professor Hall of the American University, Beirut, and Professor Jeffery and Dr. Zwemer of Cairo, it will be at once evident that this book has gathered together an unusually valuable presentation of thought and movements within the wide ranges of the Islamic world that stretches from the Philippines to Morocco. The value of that presentation is increased rather than diminished by the fact that the writers mentioned are Christians.
From an estimate by Dr. Barton of the impact and influences of Western civilization on Islam, we pass to Dr. Richter's analysis of the renaissance in the Near East. He shows how the modern life of Europe and America is flowing like
a tide through land after land, changing not only the surface values, but the fundamental outlook.
The two discussions on the Caliphate, one by Dr. Margoliouth and the other anonymous, are of the highest value and interest. Dr. Hurgronje with characteristic spaciousness of outlook combined with exactitude of scholarship places Islam in its true setting within the race problem. India, which has the largest single group of Moslems in the world (just upon seventy millions) is dealt with with intimate knowledge by Mr. Murray Titus. Dr. Zwemer shows that there is a vivid journalism in all Moslem countries ; and Miss Constance Padwiek, in a chapter that is a literary gem, opens up the possibilities of literature in Islam.
Education is handled from different angles by Professor Paul Monroe of Columbia University and Dr. William Hall of Beirut. A series of articles, in some ways the most vivid and interesting in the book, presents the life of women in India, North-West Africa and the Near East. Bishop MacInnes, Canon Danby and Canon Gairdner on the ancient and modern Oriental Christian conununities of Islam ; Mr. George Swan of Egypt on the mystical life in modern Islam ; Professor Arthur Jeffery, of the School of Oriental Studies in Cairo, on " New Trends in Moslem Apologetic " ; Dr. Robert Speer on " Islam and Christianity " ; and Dr. Paul Harrison, the renowned medical missionary of Arabia, on " Christ's Contribution to the Moslem " complete the specialist studies.
The obvious peril of a book of this kind is that it should not have sufficient intellectual unity. Dr. John R. Mott in his preface and concluding chapter on "The Outlook in the Moslem World " has gathered up the threads. It remains true, however, that the book is not really a unity in the sense of continuous, cumulative argument. That must necessarily be so, for the whole Moslem world to-day is such a chaos of conflicting movements and tendencies ; of progress and re- action ; of renaissance and decadence ; of science and super- stition ; of dividing nationalisms and unifying Islamic ambitions, that the only true picture is just such discordant facts as we have here.
From this point of view we know no single book which provides with such cumulative expert scholarship, such sagacity and sympathy, the actual facts of Islam as it is.
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